``Bernanke's rationale for interest payments on reserves included preventing banks from lending at lower interest rates. That is illogical at a time when the Fed's target interest rate for federal funds, the small market for interbank loans, was zero to a quarter of one percent... As the economy pulled out of the deep recession in 1936 the Fed Board thought the U.S. banks had too much excess reserves, so they began to raise the reserves banks were required to hold. In three steps from August 1936 to May 1937 they doubled the reserve requirements for the large banks (13 percent to 26 percent of checkable deposits) and the country banks (7 percent to 14 percent of checkable deposits)... The Bernanke Fed's 2008 to 2010 policy also immobilizes the banking system's reserves reducing the banks' incentive to make loans.''